Trumbull alarmed over fines

Keila Torres Ocasio

Updated 11:25 pm, Friday, April 4, 2014

More Information

About the ordinanceHomeowners face a $100 fine for each year the alarm is not registered with the town.If an unregistered alarm user is notified of a failure to register, they face an additional $50 fine for each false alarm until it is registered.Anyone with three to five false alarms will face $100 fines. The sixth through eighth violations will be subject to $125 fines. Those with nine or more false alarms face a $150 fine.There is no charge to register an alarm.Source: Trumbull Municipal Code

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TRUMBULL -- Dan and Jill Clark have owned an alarm system since they bought their home 13 years ago. In that time, there have only been a handful of false alarms.

So Jill Clark thought it was just an unfortunate event when a contractor working on her furnace triggered the alarm by mistake one day last fall.

Clark thought that was the end of it. But a couple of weeks later she received a $100 fine from the town for not having registered her home alarm. An ordinance that went into effect early last year had made it mandatory.

"But we knew nothing about the ordinance until we received a notice in the mail," Clark said. "It just seems we get robo-called for everything, but on something like that they don't."

Since October, when the ordinance was first enforced, the town has collected roughly $17,500 in fines.

The town law, which went into effect in January, requires residents to register their home alarms or face a $100 penalty each year. And while the first false alarm may alert individuals of their failure to register, every subsequent false alarm carries with it a $50 fine.

There are also higher fines for excessive false alarms -- from $100 for three to $150 for nine -- within a permit year. There is no fee to register an alarm.

The town's Police Department responds to thousands of false alarms each year. Each time, two police officers are dispatched to respond to the possible burglary. But in an average year, the majority turn out to be false alarms.

"We standardly have five cars on patrol in the town of Trumbull," said First Selectman Tim Herbst. "That leaves three cars to cover the entire town whenever there is a false alarm."

That means there are two cars that aren't monitoring the schools, monitoring the mall, enforcing the speed limit or responding to 911 calls, he added.

In 2011, the year Herbst first called for an alarm ordinance, the department estimated the time spent on answering these calls equated to about $70,000 a year.

The 563 false alarms that have led to fines so far have cost the town about $8,000 in officer response time, not including clerical work associated with these, according to town officials. Of those 221 were waived and 175 have already been paid.

Another 463 alarms were cancelled before police could be dispatched.

So far, 1,472 residents and 94 business owners have registered their alarms. This is not even half of the estimated 3,000 to 4,000 homeowners with alarms in town, according to Town Council member Vicki Tesoro.

"That's a lot of money and a lot of people," she said. "That's pretty good proof that people don't know."

According to town officials, the ordinance was advertised in the media, on the town's website and in the Town Clerk's newsletter.

But still, new resident Paige Francis, who moved into town in November, said she had no idea home alarms had to be registered until she saw people griping about the fines on Facebook.

"I can say with 100 percent assurance that we received no notification at all to our house," said Francis, chief information officer at Fairfield University. "I'm sure the law makes all kinds of sense but with the (lack of) communication they dropped the ball here."

Because of this, Tesoro decided to submit two resolutions to the Town Council. The first would amend the ordinance so police officers responding to a first false alarm issue a warning and give the homeowner a registration form.

The $100 fine would only be issued if the person fails to register their alarm within 30 days.

The second resolution would refund the fines collected.

"Most people, if they know about it, will do it," Tesoro said. "People are not aware of different ordinances we may pass in this town unless we tell them."

But Herbst points to a legal opinion from the town attorney that says it's not the council's job to decide whether refunds should be given when there is a process set out in the ordinance for fee waivers and appeals.